


Jack here, the real one

by cherrylime



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Swap, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, cute robots, formal wear, nonbinary rhys, seriously theyre so cute i love them, sexual harassment mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrylime/pseuds/cherrylime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys, Handsome Jack’s long suffering PA, falls in love with his boss’ double.  At the same time Jack and Timothy realize that, regardless of how identical they are physically, neither of them are happy when they discover that they've switched bodies.</p><p>Now with art!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pair of shocks

**Author's Note:**

> Rhys as Jack's PA..... with a twist! :) And tbh i really wanted to spend some time writing Jack as awful as he is in canon and exploring how inevitably terrible it would be to actually work for him and Hyperion as a whole. 
> 
> Inspired by a crack jack/tim body swap prompt given to me by featheryfire (and a thousand thanks to you for beta'ing all of my borderlands yelling)

Jack took one sip of his latte and made a face, spitting it onto the floor with a disgusted noise. 

“Pumpkin, I told you to order this with soy milk, didn’t I?”

At his desk, Rhys winced before looking up from the thick stack of paperwork that desperately needed his attention.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he replied as he got up from his chair. Hoping that maybe Jack would be more understanding if there was some kind of explanation, he continued, “There must have been a mix-up at the shop.”

“Well, go back there and make sure they understand that my order needs to be right the first time they make it. You tell them that it’s for Handsome Jack, don’t you?” Jack dropped the cup casually, letting it shatter and splash coffee all over the floor. “Go back there and get me another one and make sure you get it for free. If they mess up like this again tell them that I’ll jettison all their employees into space.”

“Right away, sir,” Rhys said, already dreading the inevitable cleanup when he returned. Despite Hyperion’s fleet of cleaning bots, Jack thoroughly enjoyed forcing Rhys to mop the floors and do other janitorial duties.

“Order it with extra cream this time,” Jack called after Rhys as he headed out of the office. 

Once Rhys was safely away and out of Jack’s sight he rolled his eyes. Soy milk with extra cream?

\--

Rhys returned to the office awhile later, carrying another grande caramel macchiato with soy milk and extra cream and with his wallet several dollars lighter by approximately the same price as Jack’s convoluted order. 

He paused at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Jack’s desk, not wanting to interrupt him as he debriefed his double. Jack made eye contact with Rhys and broke away from the conversation he was having with his double.

“There you are, kiddo,” Jack got up from his desk, breezing past the doppelganger. “Well? Did they do it right this time?”

Rhys nodded, holding out the coffee for Jack, “Oh yeah, I really let ‘em have it.”

In general, Rhys didn’t like to throw around the CEO’s horrifying influence too frivolously. Something he’d picked up as Jack’s PA was that the mere mention of “Handsome Jack” caused some people to make more mistakes than if Rhys just pretended the coffee, or whatever Jack happened to want that day, was for himself. Everyone knew who Rhys worked for and that was usually enough to strike incoherent fear into most of Hyperion’s workforce. 

So far he’d found that relaying Jack’s ridiculous threats were only particularly useful in causing the baristas to devolve into shivery, stammering wrecks. Once, when Rhys had just been hired as Jack’s PA, one of the baristas had actually cried into Jack’s in-progress latte upon realizing who it was for. 

Jack smiled approvingly, “See, that wasn’t so hard.” 

With a noisy gulp of his coffee, Jack looked expectantly between Rhys and the slowly congealing mess of the first coffee.

Rhys bit back a sigh with all the strength he could muster and went to get the mop.

Wheeling the mop bucket out of the closet in the hall with a string of mumbled complaints about how he wasn’t paid nearly enough, Rhys returned to the spilled coffee.

As he slopped water carelessly onto the floor, Rhys caught Jack’s doppelganger looking at him. Following his double’s gaze, Jack looked at him too. 

Rhys found himself feeling slightly self-conscious. He was used to catching Jack’s eyes on his ass while he cleaned, but usually everyone else made a point to ignore him.

“Kitten,” Jack said, stepping into the growing puddle of mop water and coffee and smearing the mixture around with the toe of his boot, “Doesn’t this seem like something that would be easier to clean up with paper towels?”

Jack’s double trailed him hesitantly, making a face when he stepped into the mess as well.

Rhys was barely able to keep the incredulity off his face as he looked at the frankly enormous puddle on the metal floor. “You’re right, sir, I’ll get the paper towels right away.”  
The doppelganger looked at Rhys apologetically, but didn’t say anything. 

After wheeling the mop bucket back to the supply closet and getting the towels, Rhys lowered himself onto his knees and started sopping up the muddy coffee and mop water slurry. 

Rhys’ face burned with humiliation, but this was hardly the first or last time that Jack would degrade him like this. 

With a soft whirring hum one of the flat, low-set cleaning bots emerged from its charging station in the wall and rushed at the spilled coffee at top speed. The janitorial AI had a tendency of sending out bots into Jack’s office even though he’d ordered them not to enter after one of them had vacuumed up his favorite pen just moments after he’d dropped it. Jack making a mess was a near-daily occurrence and the janitorial AI couldn’t stand to leave filth anywhere for too long, even if it had been expressly forbidden from cleaning up. 

Usually the AI managed to contain itself until Jack was out of the office, but the spill had already been there awhile.

“Oh great, here comes one of the loser patrol,” Jack scowled and lashed out at it with his foot, kicking the bot off its path and denting it but not upending it, “How many times do I have to tell you not to come in here?”

The bot chimed melodiously and continued on its way to the mess. 

Rhys stopped cleaning and sat back on his heels as the bot whirred by in front of him. As soon as the bot’s intake port touched the puddle, its dented chassis sparked brightly and sent a surge of electricity through the liquid.

Both Jack and his double yelped in pain, jumping out of the puddle. 

“Son of a taint,” Jack yelled. He swiped at the bot again with his foot but the bot was already speeding across the floor to its charging station, bleeping remorsefully. The thick steel door dropped into the place behind it, safely sealing the bot away.

Jack ran to his desk and slammed the intercom button, dialing in the extension for the janitorial department furiously.

“I want the cleaning bot assigned to my office decommissioned immediately and burned. If one of you jerk offs doesn’t do it, I’ll tear it out of the wall and take it apart myself,” Jack seethed into the microphone.

The doppelganger held his head with a dazed expression and cautiously made his way back to his seat. 

“I’m going to destroy that AI,” Jack said. 

“So, where were we?” His double asked.

“What? Right, ugh, whatever, let’s get this done.”

Rhys retreated behind his desk before Jack put him on cleaning duty again. Unable to avoid eavesdropping, Rhys couldn’t help but listen in.

Apparently now that the business on Elpis had had the chance to blow over Jack was planning to have the double stand in for him during the more boring parts of being Hyperion’s CEO. Knowing Jack, the “boring parts” would probably entail meetings with shareholders and anything else that didn’t involve guns and TV appearances.

Jack dismissed the double, sending him off to sit in on some meeting or another. As he passed Rhys’ desk, the double noticed Rhys looking at him and smiled. He looked worn down, but the smile was genuine. It was strange to see such an authentic smile on a face that looked like Handsome Jack’s. In fact, despite how convincingly like Jack the double looked, his expressions made it obvious he wasn’t the original.

Rhys had only just placed the first piece of paperwork in his finished pile when Jack asked him why there was still a huge mess on the floor. 

\--

“My double will be coming back in later today so that you can help organize his schedule,” Jack dropped a colorful calendar onto Rhys’ desk. “Everything in blue is what I expect him to go to, everything in yellow is the stuff that I’ll do personally, and the green are his days off. And tell him to come back here at 9 AM sharp tomorrow morning.”  
Not unexpectedly, most of the calendar was highlighted in blue. 

“Do you think it might be a good idea to start him off with just a few things? Make sure that he knows what he’s doing?” Rhys ventured cautiously. The last thing he needed was some rich outer planet mogul taking it personally that Jack himself hadn’t showed up to their fancy ribbon cutting ceremony. 

“Nonsense, he’s been working here for months already. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,” Jack laughed. “And if he doesn’t I’ll just kill him.”

Jack started back toward his desk, but thought better of it and turned around, “Maybe help him out a little if stuff starts to go south, alright? I kind of like this one.”

\--

The doppelganger showed up around lunchtime. Jack was gone for the moment, off to the cafeteria for a skag burger and to have a bit of fun terrorizing the employees with his presence. Rhys ate at his desk, checking his texts from Yvette and Vaughn. 

“Sorry, is now a bad time? I can come back,” the double said. 

Rhys looked up from his food. He hadn’t heard anyone come in. 

“No, now is fine,” Rhys scooted his lunch out of the way. “This shouldn’t take very long.”

The double sat down awkwardly in one of the chairs in front of Rhys’ desk. He always seemed to be a bit uncertain with his movements, like he wasn’t used to the way his body was shaped yet. Even now, months after Jack had hired him.

“So,” Rhys began, “Is there something I can call you other than ‘vault hunter?’ It seems like we might be working together more often.”

In the chair, the doppelganger shifted nervously. “I’m legally bound not to tell anyone what my name is.”

“Oh-”

“But it rhymes with ‘Jimothy’,” he added hastily. 

“Timothy?” Rhys asked.

Timothy nodded.

“That’s a nice name,” Rhys said. 

When he smiled like that, Timothy didn’t look much like Jack. 

“Here, I made a copy of Jack’s schedule for you,” Rhys passed Timothy a color-coded copy.

“I’m guessing that all the blue is when he wants me to show up as him?”

“Yeah, Jack’s set you up with a lot of events in the next few days,” Rhys looked up from the planner. 

“I’m glad to have his vote of confidence,” Timothy said. “What’s my week look like?”

“You’ve got a gala tonight night with Duke Hydron Von Schmurtz, several meetings with the board of directors throughout the week, and a monster truck rally on Saturday night with Mr. Torgue.” 

“Jack doesn’t want to go to that last one himself?”

Rhys shook his head, “He told me that he has a very important meeting planned with the Sheriff of Lynchwood that evening.”

“Oh,” Timothy said, but his eyes widened with understanding after a moment. “Oh, ew.”

Nodding with agreement, Rhys cracked a smile. “I can’t count the number of times Jack’s kicked me out of here so that he could have one of his ‘meetings’ with her.”

Timothy laughed. “Why am I not surprised. Tell me about the board of directors first, that sounds pretty intimidating.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about those meetings.”

“Jack doesn’t report to a board of directors?”

“Handsome Jack does whatever he wants,” Rhys shrugged. “The company just scrambles trying to make everything he wants work behind the scenes without getting themselves airlocked. After Hyperion replaced the entire board a few times, everyone decided that it was best not to get in Jack’s way.” 

Timothy let his eyes drop to the dented cleaning bot that was making its harried rounds through the office before Jack got back.

“And so far, Hyperion is making ridiculous amounts of money. None of the stockholders are complaining.”

Nodding, Timothy said, “Tell me about the gala.”

“This event actually matters and it might be a good idea for me to go with you to this one, so I can point out important people whose names Jack should already know. I don’t have time beforehand to brief you on names and faces.”

“That makes sense,” Timothy replied.


	2. Rhys art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not a /real/ chapter but i reallyyy wanted to draw rhys in heels so here we are. the next actual chapter should be up soon :)
> 
> there a lil transparent bonus but im not sure if that works on ao3? here's a tumblr link: http://wildcherrylime.tumblr.com/post/146922766919/hes-transparent-drag-him-just-smth-quick-i


End file.
